Something You Should Know

by Melissa Hill

  He stood up and angrily resumed flinging his clothes into his suitcase, rumpling and creasing his shirts as he did. “He deserves to know the truth too, don’t you think? After all, he is Holly’s father.” And with this, unable to hold back his feelings any longer, Mike broke down and began sobbing uncontrollably.

  Jenny went to him, anxious to hold him in her arms, to apologise, to try and make everything OK again. But as he turned away from her, she knew deep down that for Mike things would never be OK again.

  What she had said to him was true: she hadn’t yet decided whether or not to tell Roan. But it wasn’t about that. His return had simply been the catalyst for Jenny to rid herself of the guilt that consumed her every day, since she discovered her fears about Holly’s parentage had been realised.

  It had hit her suddenly not long after her daughter was born, when one day she noticed Holly watching a baby-mobile dangling above her cot, puzzled by it. She had been staring at it with the same expression that Jenny had often seen Roan use, when he was perplexed about something. Additionally, as she got older, Holly’s complexion and hair colour became darker, whereas Mike and Jenny were both fair. She had inherited her mother’s pale blue eyes and this it seemed was enough to deflect comment or suspicion from anyone, including Mike.

  But strangely enough, Holly appeared to possess Mike’s temperament. She was rarely grumpy or troublesome, and if anything, Jenny thought, she was an unusually good-natured child, always smiling and laughing at anyone who noticed her. She adored attention but unlike most other toddlers Jenny had come across, didn’t roar or sulk if it wasn’t forthcoming. Often, she had been stopped on the street while talking Holly for a walk, complete strangers captivated by her daughter’s beaming smile and happy giggle.

  “She’s got the cutest little dimples,” an older woman had said to her one day, while bending down to admire Holly in her buggy. Jenny had been so upset by this that she had rushed off without a word, leaving the woman staring after her in surprise and remarking sadly that if the mother had no manners, then there wasn’t any hope at all for the poor child.

  Jenny stood watching in silence, as Mike finished collecting his things. Picking up his suitcase, and without looking at her, he walked through their bedroom doorway and out into the hallway. Then he hesitated a moment, dropped his bags and went into Holly’s room, planting a little kiss on her forehead as she lay sleeping soundly. When he came back out and Jenny saw the pain etched on his face, she thought at that moment her heart would surely break.

  “I’ll – I’ll try and be out of here as soon as I can,” she said, afraid to look at him, aching to touch him.

  Mike picked up his suitcase and head towards the front door.

  “Take your time. I wouldn’t want Holly ending up in a dingy flat somewhere,” he said, his eyes hard as flints. He looked through Jenny as though she wasn’t even there, his mind elsewhere.

  She asked him where he would go. Mike told her nothing other than she should leave a message at the office, as soon as she and Holly found somewhere else to live.

  He had walked out the front door without another word and without looking back.

  Jenny stood there with the door open for a long time afterwards, trying to pretend it wasn’t real, hoping that it wasn’t happening. She hadn’t heard a word from him since. It was over, and both of them knew it.

  But had she really expected anything else?

  The smell of burning milk brought Jenny sharply back to the present. She looked over at the cooker and noticed to her dismay that the pot of milk she had been warming for Holly’s breakfast had boiled over and congealed all over the hob. Feeling well and truly defeated, Jenny sank down at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands.

  Mike was gone. It was all over. With her lies, Jenny had ruined everything. She had hoped that after he calmed down and had a chance to think about everything, that he might reconsider, he might be able to forgive her, he might even try and understand. But she knew that she didn’t even have the luxury of clinging to a false hope.There was simply no hope to cling to.

  She would ring him tomorrow and let him know that she and Holly would be out of house by the weekend. Despite Jenny’s protests that her friend had enough to contend with, with her court case on the horizon, Karen had insisted that they come live with her until Jenny found something else.

  “Anyway,” Karen had said good-humouredly, “the more of us there are living there, the harder it is for them to kick us out.”

  Jenny had reluctantly agreed, but only because she wanted to get away from Mike’s house. She had felt guilty enough staying there after he left. Soon, she would have a find a place of her own and begin a new life, life as a single mother.

  But despite the hurt, the pain and the desperation she felt since losing Mike, Jenny felt a clear sense of relief, relief at the proverbial weight having been lifted from her shoulders, relief at the fact that she no longer had to live a lie. At least now, although uncertain about what life had in store for her and her daughter, Jenny could finally live with herself, and this thought brought her some comfort.

  Ill at ease, little Holly watched her mother from across the room, upset by her melancholy demeanour and the tears running down Jenny’s face.

  “Da-Da.” she said, banging her spoon happily on the plastic play chair, trying to cheer up her mother, by reciting the only word that her thirteen-month-old vocal chords could manage. “Da-Da. Da-Da. Da-Da.”

  Chapter 45

  Karen looked around her living-room and tried to view it through fresh eyes, prospective buyers’ eyes. Inviting and homely, the warm gold walls, terracotta curtains and suite complemented the pine wooden floor perfectly.

  Shane had been so proud of the house, but Karen knew that this room in particular had been his favourite. She remembered him cursing wildly the day he tried laying the wooden floor, determined that he could do it without any help. It had taken him much longer to complete it than the ‘couple of hours’ the sales assistant at Woodies had advised, not to mention the additional hours of repeated sanding and varnishing, but to Shane it had all been worth the satisfaction of being able to tell everyone that he had done it all himself ‘no problem’.

  Karen had been surprised that Shane enjoyed DIY as much as he had. He had tackled the kitchen units with gusto, albeit with a little help from Aidan, whose father was a carpenter by trade. Between them, they had ripped down the dreary wine-coloured painted doors and white frames, and had modernised the room instantly by replacing the units with bright maple doors, modern chrome handles and a solid granite worktop.

  Room by room, and with infectious enthusiasm, Shane had transformed the dull décor of 22a Harolds Cross Crescent. Gone was the jaded floral wallpaper, the swirling patterned carpets and the off-white doors and skirting. Instead, he and Karen had opted for wooden fixtures and warm colours, deep reds, warm gold and terracotta.

  The results had been stunning. Karen knew that if this house were to be offered on the market, it would be snapped up within days and for a grossly inflated price, netting the seller something reasonably close to a fortune.

  But the house would not be going on the market anytime soon, not if Karen could help it. There was no way the Quinns were getting their grubby, selfish little hands on Shane’s home, not without one hell of a fight.

  Or, Karen thought, to put it less dramatically, a court battle. The solicitor had telephoned that morning to tell her that a court date had been agreed. She and Jack Quinn were to come before a judge on February 18th.

  Karen was determined to fight and to win.

  People that she didn’t even know very well, work colleagues, her boss, her next door neighbour – a snobbish woman who had never deigned to speak to either Karen or Shane before his death – had been telling her that she was coping well, that she was doing the right thing by going back to work so soon after the funeral, that she was managing ‘admirably’. Even her own mother had complimented her on her ability to
‘bounce back’. Mrs Cassidy had said this a few weeks after the funeral, when her parents had finally been able to tear themselves away from business, to pay her a visit – the same weekend they had scheduled to come home for the wedding.

  Karen had sent them back to Tenerife early, frustrated with her mother’s constant jabbering about how living in a sunny climate had done untold damage to her skin, and couldn’t Karen see all the wrinkles that had suddenly appeared on her face? Clara Cassidy could never have been described as maternal, and Karen didn’t expect her to be any different, but she wondered how any mother could be so self-absorbed and seemingly oblivious to her child’s pain. After spending a couple of days with her mother, Karen literally had to stop herself from hitting the woman, and she was pretty sure she would have done had Aidan not been at the house with them.

  He had been wonderful, especially in the months afterwards, when everyone else, unable to be of any help, had left her alone, and got on with their own lives, hoping to regain some sense of normality. He had been the one to cancel the wedding and honeymoon arrangements, ensuring Karen would not have to make the heartbreaking calls to the registry office and the hotel. Jenny and Mike had been there whenever Karen needed someone to talk to, or a shoulder to cry on, and Tessa was never off the phone asking her to come and visit her and Gerry in Cork.

  On the day that was to be Karen and Shane’s wedding day, both couples insisted that she come and stay with them, hoping to keep her mind occupied, but Karen couldn’t bring herself to spend the day pretending. She knew that June 15th, which should have been the happiest day of her life, would now always be associated with sadness, loss, and regret. She and Jenny had never made it to Belfast for their shopping trip, so at least she didn’t have a wedding dress to mock and remind her of everything she had lost.

  Maybe it would get easier as time went by. People kept telling her it would, but how did they know?

  Aidan was the only one who seemed to understand, the only one who didn’t tell Karen that she would get over it, that it would get easier, that she had to get on with her life. United by their mutual loss, she and Aidan shared the understanding that it would be a very long time before either of them managed to do that, if ever. It was this shared understanding, and unified sorrow, that enabled Aidan and Karen to comfort one another. For this Karen had been grateful. She had been grateful that Aidan understood every time she rang him crying, lonely and vulnerable in the middle of the night, after waking up from a nightmare. She had been grateful that, unlike everyone else, he had respected her wishes to be left alone on her wedding day, but had dropped everything when she phoned that evening, and let her cry silently in his arms for a very long time. Karen knew that each would have been lost without the other’s support.

  However, Aidan was in serious disagreement with Karen over her decision to fight the Quinn family for possession of her house.

  “Karen, I’ve checked it out, and in cases like this the law is absolutely clear. You are not Shane’s next of kin; you were never his next of kin. You can’t fight the wording on it,” he had said one day, after Karen had been turned down again by yet another solicitor, unwilling to take the case.

  But nothing anyone could say would stop her. Karen was going to fight Jack Quinn and she was going to win.

  *****

  That evening Jenny arrived, anxious, tired, and straining with the weight of her problems, and the bags containing Holly’s things.

  “I didn’t want to leave anything behind,” she explained, seeing Karen eyeing the Punto’s open boot, which contained a stack of suitcases and a pile of black refuse sacks, ostensibly containing everything Jenny had ever owned.

  “Did you tell Mike you were coming here?” Karen asked her, trying to ignore Holly holding her arms out towards her, obviously wanting to be untied from her car seat. Holly was one of the few children that Karen wasn’t afraid of, but she wouldn’t go as far as picking her up and cuddling her.

  “Here, I’ll get the bags – why don’t you organise Holly first?” she said.

  Jenny handed her the bags with a grateful look. She mopped her sweating brow and then went about the not-inconsiderable task of settling Holly.

  “He was in a meeting when I called, so I left a message on his voice-mail,” Jenny said, referring to Mike. “I was glad in a way, because then I didn’t have to speak to him directly – Holly, stop whinging. “But,” she continued, “Alison the receptionist, who obviously didn’t recognise my voice – and I didn’t introduce myself – told me that Mr Williams was available to take Mike’s calls and would I like to speak to him?” She rolled her eyes. “I would have laughed, only it’s not one bit funny.”

  Karen nodded sympathetically, understanding that things were difficult for Jenny, but they must be equally as difficult for Mike, who had to continue working with Roan since discovering who he was, and what he stood for.

  Later, after Jenny had settled her things in the spare room, and Holly was sleeping peacefully in her carry-cot, Karen opened a bottle of wine, and the two of them sat companionably in her living-room.

  “So, how are you feeling?” Karen asked, pouring her friend a glass of Chablis.

  “Better than I expected, to be honest,” she answered. “I was just so anxious to get out of there. Thanks so much for letting us stay here.”

  Karen waved her away. “You’re welcome, but unfortunately I can’t add that you can stay as long as you like. I told you that a date has been set for the case, didn’t I?”

  Jenny nodded. “You’re definitely going to go through with it, then?”

  “Absolutely,” Karen said in a tone that brooked no argument. “I told you before, even if I haven’t a chance in hell, I’m not letting the Quinns think they can walk all over me like that.”

  “But what happens if the courts side with Jack Quinn? That’s the general consensus, isn’t it, that as a common-law wife you have effectively no rights?”

  Karen sighed. “Jenny, please don’t try and talk me out of this. I didn’t take the decision lightly, you know. It took me long enough to get this thing into the courts as it is.”

  “I know that. And I know how important the house is to you. But don’t you think that this whole thing is … ” She broke off, thinking that if she continued with what she was going to say, her friend would go ballistic. “I’m just afraid that you’ll get hurt,” she said softly. “There’s no love lost between you and the Quinns and you never know what they might say about you, what kind of things they might drag up. Character assassination is a great way to lose any sympathy you might get.”

  Karen gave a short laugh. “You’ve been watching too much Judge Judy. I know what I’m doing, Jen.”

  Jenny shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She and Karen had had this conversation many times before, and she knew by now that Karen would never yield to anyone else’s point of view. She feared that her friend was making a big mistake taking on Shane’s family over an already established point of law. She couldn’t possibly win and the Quinns knew it, their solicitor knew it, and Karen’s solicitor knew it. The only person that didn’t know it – or at least wouldn’t admit to it – was Karen.

  Jenny believed that the entire situation would end not only in tears, but also with a fat expenses bill from both solicitors. And Karen certainly couldn’t afford that; she could barely afford the mortgage. As things stood, practically all of her salary went towards the repayments.

  “What does Aidan think?” she asked carefully.

  Karen sniffed. “He wants me to give it up, forget about it, – same as you do.”

  “Karen, it’s not like that. You know full well that I’ll support you, we’ll support you every step of the way – we’re just not as convinced as you are that this is the best way forward.”

  “And what am I supposed to do, Jenny?” Karen said, cheeks reddening with annoyance. “Where am I supposed to go? This is my home, our home, Shane’s and mine. He worked himself to the bone to get the depos
it, sacrificed a lot to keep up the repayments. You know how tight things were for us. It can’t be all for nothing.”

  Her eyes flashed angrily as she spoke. “You saw it yourself the other day when the estate agent called here. Jack Quinn wants to sell this place off – he doesn’t care about me, doesn’t care about Shane and what he might have wanted. He just wants to make a profit, another few quid to add to the thousands of euros he already has in the bank. He doesn’t give a shit, Jenny.” She wiped her eyes viciously and in such a way that, if any tears even thought about appearing, they would disappear just as quickly if they knew what was good for them.

  Jenny wished she hadn’t said anything. It was, and had always been a very sore subject, since they first learnt of the Quinn’s intention to sell the house and Karen’s decision to fight them.

  Mike had told Jenny privately on more than one occasion that Karen ‘hadn’t a chance in hell’. Since the house and the mortgage had never been in her name, she had absolutely no rights over the property, other than what she had paid towards the mortgage. She could certainly argue that she had contributed towards furnishings and improvements which consequently increased the value of the house, but with the way house prices were rising in Dublin these days, it would be difficult to prove this or put any kind of figure on it. And as Jack Quinn had guaranteed the mortgage in the first place, everything was in his favour.

  Saying nothing more, and allowing Karen to calm down a little, Jenny reached for the bottle of wine and refilled their glasses.

  “I’m sorry,” Karen said softly.

  Jenny smiled. “Don’t be silly. You’re entitled to get upset, you know. We all do it, believe me,” she added wryly.

  Karen picked up a strand of her dark hair and began twisting it between her fingers.

  “I know you’re only trying to help, Jen, but can we change the subject?”